History: (The Daredevils#7) - As reported in The Guardian,
Sir James Jaspers, Conservative member for Haslope West, made a call in the
House of Commons for strict disciplinary measures to be brought in to deal
with superhumans active in the British Isles.

(The Daredevils#9) - Sir James continued his campaign by making
a speech on television: "They are clandestine, they are frighteningly powerful,
and they are not our friends. They have walked among us for more than forty
years, robbing us of independence and endangering our lives...and they call
themselves superheroes!

America
is overrun with them, they have established footholds in Canada, Africa and
the Middle East. Even Russia has not proven immune. Many of the creatures
are individually as powerful as entire armies! And they number in
hundreds...hundreds!

We have encouraged them! Last month, President Ronald
Reagan granted a full pardon to the mindless engine of destruction
known as the Hulk.

These monsters ignore our laws and threaten our freedom, yet
we welcome them with open arms! They must be contained! But
how? How do you contain a being that can uproot mountains or walk
through walls? How do you reprimand creatures that are indestructible, that
can bend the very lightning to their will? How do we suppress the
supermen?

But let them know this...Impregnable though they may be, humanity
is aware of the menace they pose. We have closed our ranks against them and
we stand determined...waiting to see who will make the next move."

The speech was word for word identical to the one made by the
James Jaspers of Earth-238 before he launched his crusade that led to the
death of every superhero in his world.

Following the speech Sir James attended an exclusive party where
he thanked Sebastian Shaw of the Hellfire Club for his generous contributions
to the campaign and was introduced to Henry Peter Gyrich. He informed Gyrich
that Sebastian should drag him down to the Club next time he was in town,
before moving on to other discussions. At one point during the proceedings
he ended up with a glass of white wine in his hand; since he only liked red
wine he altered reality to change this. And in Otherworld Merlyn and Roma
observed this, Merlyn commenting "And so it begins..."

Later that night the crimelord Vixen who secretly controlled
the government agency S.T.R.I.K.E. received a phone call from Jaspers, informing
her that within a week they would receive the order to eradicate all
superhumans.

(The
Daredevils#10) - Cobweb of the Special Executive had a nightmare vision of
the impending future, and saw Jaspers, "the crooked man", his face looming
over a twisted world full of corpses.

(The Mighty World of Marvel featuring the Daredevils#7 (fb)
- BTS) - Instigated by Jaspers, Britain became a police state, with
"Beetle"-armoured S.T.R.I.K.E. agents rounding up anyone with even the slightest
degree of superhuman powers, and incarcerating them in concentration camps.
Jaspers' face was plastered on bill boards, next to the message "In your
hearts, you know he's right!"

(The Mighty World of Marvel#8) - Jaspers became the Prime Minister,
winning in an election landslide. Feeling that he had gone too far, Vixen
and two of her men broke into Number 10, Downing Street to confront him,
but they found him in an office where reality held no sway. While Jaspers
danced around in an ever changing array of hats, both of Vixen's men suffered
horrendous transformations. Jaspers then turned Vixen into a small fox, a
vixen in form as well as name.

(The Mighty World of Marvel#9) - Jaspers let his reality warp
spread across the country and presumably the world. As reality was replaced
with nightmare (the
Jaspers Warp), Captain Britain raced to Downing
Street to face Jaspers, with Merlyn watching and commenting that the Jaspers
of Earth-238 "could at least be halted, even if it meant destroying his entire
continuum. This one is not so easily containable...and if he cannot be defeated,
then the Omniverse shall fall into Chaos...and a new and hostile God shall
play dice with matter." Captain Britain entered Jaspers' office to find Jaspers
a giant at one with the universe.

(The Mighty World of Marvel#9) - A gigantic Jaspers watched
over the hell he had turned London into. Simultaneously the giant held Captain
Britain up, no bigger than an insect in comparison. He subjected the hero
to a barrage of false memories, first of still being on Earth-238, then of
being a much younger man awakening in a hospital bed to find he was not a
superhero and that he was married to Courtney Ross, his girlfriend from
University. But these were illusions, that departed when Jaspers bored of
them.

Jaspers
droppd the Captain and returned to normal size. He turned his back on the
hero who viciously attacked him, trying to beat him to death. But he found
that all he was hitting was a straw man, as reality shifted and Jaspers went
through a variety of transformations, amongst them the Devil and the Grim
Reaper. He put Captain Britain through a combine harvester, literally, then
walked away leaving him for dead. As the Captain struggled to his feet to
continue the fight, the Fury approached.

(The Mighty World of Marvel#10) - Feeling lonely Jaspers created
the Crazy Gang out of the earth itself. While introducing himself to his
new friends, he spotted the Fury battling Captain Britain. Not recognising
the killer cybiote, he went over to it to ask it what it was. He was struck
first by a strange sense of deja-vu, feeling they had met before, then by
the cybiote's destructive energy blast, as it concluded that this Jaspers
was not the same Jaspers that had created it and programmed it to leave him
alone out of all the superhumans it encountered. It fried him, leaving only
a smoking corpse.

But the flesh swiftly crept back over Jaspers' bones, and he
became a muscular boxer, with the Fury being turned into a giant ball for
him to hit. The Fury, with its supreme ability to adapt to any situation
and the experience it had gained from its recent dimensional
jaunt, survived, and a bizarre battle commenced as each combatant switched
from form to form in an attempt to gain the upper hand.

(The Mighty World of Marvel#11) - The battle continued, and
the two fighters began jumping to new locations, each one increasingly deadly,
their bodies warping as they went, trying to kill one another. Eventually
the Fury used its dimension travelling capabilities to take them both to
Un-Space, the empty void between the dimensions. With no clay for his
mind to play with, Jaspers reverted to his original human form. The Fury
extended a filament through his cranium from one hand to the other, and then
incinerated his brain, killing him. It then returned with his corpse to
Earth-616.

After the weakened Fury was destroyed by the combined efforts
of Captain Britain and Captain U.K., Saturnyne took the opportunity to scrape
a small amount of skin from Jaspers' face into a glass tube....

(The Mighty World of Marvel#12) - Saturnyne used the threat
of activating a Jaspers clone to convince her replacement as Omniversal Majestrix
to restore her to power. Watching from Otherworld, Roma informed the two
Captains that she had killed the cell scrapings, making cloning
impossible.

(Uncanny
X-Men#462) - As the disruptive energy wave from the "House of M" reality
warp washed across Otherworld, causing chaos and a temporary breakdown between
inter-dimensional barriers (causing beings from multiple realities to briefly
appear on Otherworld), one side effect was that Mad Jim Jaspers returned
to life (see comments), coalescing first as energy and then regaining
corporeal form. He commented that he both minded having been dead, and the
dashed length of time it had taken to come back. Noting the strange beings
around him, he spotted Roma, the Omniversal Guardian, trapped beneath a fallen
pillar. Somehow recognising her as the area's ruler, he commented it was
time for her to go, but before he could inflict injury, he was surprised
to see his left arm transform into an energy cannon, which he recognised
as being like the creature which had killed him. As the transformation spread
further, he recalled the manner of his death, before pointing his gun arm
at the pinned Roma. He introduced himself to the newly wakened woman as "James
Jaspers, Prime Minister of England and Overlord of the Omniverse." Before
he could fire, he was struck by an unexpected blow from Captain Britain,
who had raced up unnoticed, and Jaspers was sent flying into the distance.

(X-Men: Die by the Sword#1) - Fury infected Jaspers was approached by Merlyn, who offered to be his partner against Roma and Captain Britain (Brian Braddock). During their conversation three Corps members attacked and Jaspers transformed them into Fury copies.

(X-Men: Die by the Sword#2) - Jaspers and his Fury copies watched the coming of more Corps members.

(X-Men: Die by the Sword#3) - Jaspers and the Fury copies easily fought back the Corps and several of them were transformed by Jaspers into more Fury copies. His attempt to transform Captain UK was thwarted by other Corps members, who weren't so lucky. Eventually Jaspers was shot by Saturnyne with a specialized gun that should split his psyche from the Fury's, but she was interrupted by Fury copies before she could succeed. Jaspers reformed his body and realized that something was wrong with his mind, but before he could investigate he was attacked by the Exiles (Blink, Mimic, Sabretooth, Thunderbird).

(X-Men: Die by the Sword#4) - Jaspers overpowered the Exiles, but they were saved by Albion. During Jaspers fight with Albion, he transformed into the Fury, loosing control over his own body. He helplessly watched as the Fury absorbed the life forces of most present Corps members to complete the transformation.

(X-Men: Die by the Sword#5 - BTS) - Jaspers continued to struggle against Fury's control, which weakened the cybiote during his fight against Captain Britain (Braddock) and Albion. The Fury was eventually blown up by Blink, seemingly destroying Jaspers along with the cybiote.

Comments: Created by Alan Davis and Alan Moore.

Jaspers is, in my opinion, the ultimate villain in what is the
best story Marvel has ever produced. You keep meeting villains we get told
are capable of destroying the world or having ultimate power, but except
for Jaspers, you just don't feel those statements are anything more than
hot air. A lot of his impact comes from the excellent art of Alan Davis,
as he shows the effects of the devastating Jaspers Warp on the world around
it, with buildings twisting in the sky and bodies distorting or bursting
into flames.

It was revealed in The Mighty World of Marvel #13 that Merlyn
had deliberately allowed Linda McQuillan, Captain U.K., to escape her own
world so that she would act as a lure to draw the Fury to Earth 616 and
eventually to a confrontation with this version of Jaspers. Apparently he
felt that only the creation of one Jaspers could possibly kill this other,
more deadly version.

The summary of Uncanny X-Men#200 is adapted from the summary
given by Nicholas Giard. However, at the end of his summary,
he mentions that the story precedes the Jaspers Warp stories (Daredevils#7
- Mighty World of Marvel#11). However, there are a few problems with the
chronology.

(1) MWoM#12 came out in May, 1984--roughly 18 months before
UXM#200 and 28 months before UXM#210, the start of the Mutant Massacre.

By the time of the Mutant Massacre, Betsy Braddock, Psylocke
was with the X-Men. When she had joined, she had already been beaten to a
pulp by Slaymaster, which is what blinded her
(http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/slaymast.htm). Betsy got robot eyes to see, from Mojo.

A (non-powered) clone of Jaspers may well explain his subsequent
appearance in X-Men#200 and X-Men vs Avengers#4. Or it may just be that world
created a new version of him to fill the gap left by his death - as Roma
says to the Captain's Britain and U.K. "Reality does not tolerate paradox
for long, and it will repair the rents in its own fabric..." - so the
spontanteous appearance of a non-mutant version could just be the world's
way of healing. Regardless, since the recently revived Jaspers recalls his
death and nothing in between, this pretty much eliminates the odds that the
trial Jaspers was the original, so I've moved the trial Jaspers' history
out of the main section. For the record, it's presented here:

(Uncanny X-Men#200) - During the trial of Magneto , Sir James
Jaspers proved himself to be a rabid anti-mutant prosecutor who wanted Magneto
to be punished for his crimes: Regardless of his age and his being reduced
to infancy and restored to adulthood he did commit all those crimes in his
lifetime. At the trial, Admiral Suvorov testified that Magneto did sink a
nuclear submarine that he had lauched in retaliation for Magneto's threatening
the world. Magneto explained that he was acting in self-preservation and
the enraged Jaspers screamed that Magneto was holding the world hostage and
was sternly asked by President Devereux to be quiet : this is a court of
justice, after all.
Fenris, the children of Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, interrupted the trial,
seeking vengeance on Magneto for his past conflicts with their father. While
Fenris are concentrating on Magneto, Xavier jumped between them from behind,
separating them. They needed physical contact for their powers to work, and
were now helpless. Jasper took opportunity of the situation, and attempted
to hit Andrea Strucker on the head with a piece of rock, yet Magneto stopped
him. Xavier had a seizure and in the distraction the twins touch hands again.
They blew a hole to the river, and vanished in a the flood that comes in.
Following the battle, Magneto left the court, refusing to accept its judgement
any longer.

(X-Men vs the Avengers#4) - Magneto surrendered to the Avengers
and again stood trial at the International Court of Justice. Sir James Jaspers
again served as chief prosecutor. He questioned Suvorov again, reviewing
Magneto's sinking of the nuclear submarine. He next questioned Captain America,
asking him if he believed that Magneto had changed his ways--to which Captain
America replied "No."
Ultimately, Magneto was judged to be afforded the same rights and privileges
as any other warring state. He was exonerated of crime in the International
Court, but judged to still have to stand trial under individual nations whose
laws he broke.

Jaspers' resurrection might be like many of the other individuals
on Earth-616 revived when its timeline was replaced by the House of M one,
brought back because the circumstances which caused their deaths in 616 never
happened in the new timeline. However, given that he wasn't on Earth-616
at the time, and that Captain Britain and Meggan weren't affected by the
rewritten timeline until they later went to Earth-616, this may not be the
full story. It's also worth considering that his apparently becoming an amalgam
of himself and the Fury may be down to the Fury "infecting" him in the way
it did Sidney
Crumb.

Jim
Jaspers seems to be based on the British comedian Terry Thomas.
--Per Degaton

Here is an excellent batch of information courtesy of
Nick, the Squid:I saved an article posted to alt.comics.alan-moore a few years back:
Here's the thing for your reading pleasure:
Chris Claremont was going to do something with the Fury in X-Men but Alan
Moore put a stop to it... Here's the story according to Phil
Hall...

Rich J:
> Phil, I've wondered... did this involve the use of his characters in
X-Men at all? It always looked to me like Jaspers was being set up for the
Fall Of The Mutants with the Adversary put in instead... FOTM had Roma in
after all...

Oooh, big can of worms... Now as most people know, Alan fell
out with Marvel over the reprinting of Doctor Who strips in the US Doctor
Who editions. Marvel didn't have a reprint royalties set up and Alan wasn't
happy about this. With the rift there and widening, Chris Claremont, who
was unaware of the political problems brewing, introduced Sir James Jaspers
into Uncanny X-Men#200. His intention was to slowly have the character infiltrate
and eventually have a Jaspers' Warp in this reality (wasn't it retconned
out of regular existence by Alan Davis? I can't remember) with the X-teams
as the main thrust in the line-spanning story. Alan went (so I've been told)
ballistic over the Jaspers appearance and effectively severed any chance
of a reconcilliation. Now, this is where I get a bit hazy for a while because
while I know what I was told, I'm not sure about the legal implications:
there is apparently a glaring difference between US and UK copyright laws
and Marvel's lawyers allegedlyrecommended to Marvel that they basically ignore
Moore's creations and story ideas. The legalise would eventually cost Marvel
a lot of money and wasted time and the upshot was they dumped the X-Men:
Jaspers' Warp idea.

An old acquaintance of mine interviewed John Romita Jr in FP
Birmingham back in 1985 or 6 for his fanzine KOOKS and JrJr said that he
was "really looking forward to playing with some of the cool characters that
Alans Moore and Davis had created for the Captain Britain strip. Now quite
amazingly, Claremont had intentions of not only introducing Jaspers, but
also the Fury (which at one point was firmly on the cards as Alan Davis and
Mike Collins had basically resurrected the Fury in Sid's Story and there
was more of a haze around the characters ownership - Mr C might be able to
offer more on this) and the Special Executive. We all know that the SE became
the Technet, but what happened to the Fury? (More later)

Romita also said that there would be hints and beginnings of
subplots in many of the other Marvel comics, I was out of the loop at the
time, but perhaps others noticed odd things happening in their Marvels during
1986. I have also heard that Marvel insisted on a reference to the Jaspers
Warp in a post Moore Captain Britain (I think this was Mike Collins' Sid's
Story) and there was also a mention (retconning?) of the Jaspers' Warp in
an early issue of Excalibur (Kylun?) - sorry it's been ages since I read
them and there all in the other loft.As mentioned below, the Jaspers Warp is responsible for
the creation of the Warpies--Snood.

Then Claremont became privy to all the politicking and immediately
rewrote his impending blockbuster and subsequently what Romita hinted might
have been the equivelant of a Marvel Crisis (hot on the heels of the real
one) was laid to rest.

Now, in 1990ish, while I was starting to put what was never
my fourth issue of Mutant Media together, I stumbled across a lot of stuff
about Claremont's and Marvel's plans. I was putting together a column called
something along the lines of Hypotheticals: What might have happened in Alan
Moore's Marvel Universe. Corrin probably has a better memory than me, I haven't
got an issue to hand, but we did toy with the concept in issue#3 I
think.

From what I can remember, the Marvel Jaspers' warp storyline
was to have begun in #200 of X-Men. Jim Jasper was introduced as a bad lad
(English, of course) and the only person on the face of the planet capable
of stopping him instantly, Charles Xavie,r is exiled back to space because
his cloned body is packing up. The issues went very much the way they were
planned to for six months, but then changes were made, but originally, from
what I gathered, Nimrod, the futuristic sentinel, living as a Hispanic good
bloke in the ghetto was to have stumbled upon the remains of an entity that
enters our reality through a hole in the STC. Nimrod accidently merges with
the Fury and becomes not only indestructible, but very, very, very, smart
and eloquent. "Doc Doom times a googleplex" was one of the lines I read.
Essentially from this point on, you'll see what did happen in between the
cracks of what didn't:

Romita was leaving the book, so Alan Davis was asked to do it.
He declined because of the restrictions that were becoming apparent even
this early. He also didn't really want the gig at the time. The Mutant Massacre
was to have been commited solely by the Nimrod/Fury hybrid. He is eventually
only stopped by Kitty phasing through him and disrupting his circuits. However,
Kitty, Nightcrawler, Colossus AND a new character Longshot, were to have
been relocated to Muir Island to work with Captain Britain and his teamand
for medical attention. Kitty was always going to be critically injured, as
was Nightcrawler. Colossus was sent as protection and as a perfect foil for
Brian Braddock, who Kitty would develop a crush on.

Mutants, good bad or indifferent began flocking to Xavier's
and with Phoenix (Rachel Summers) conveniently out of the way and Kitty and
Braddock in Scotland, there were no members to see the parallels with Days
of Future Past or with the Jaspers' Warp. America was in the thralls (throes
) of mutant hysteria and Magneto now in charge of the X-Men has to make some
decisions that effect the status quo. Allegiances are formed with villains
and new players, such as Mr Sinister and others were becoming prominent mutants
through their covert ways.

The UN decrees that mutants are a menace and Jaspers meets Nimrod
and subsequently becomes aware he too is a mutant and a pretty powerful one.
Unlike the Jaspers' Warp, these two become allies, or at least that is what
Jaspers' thinks. With reality falling apart and Nimrod culling mutants, Forge
is drawn into battle and what happened in Fall of the Mutants is essentially
what was written, except the big fight scene was different and the denouement
was different. Instead of being impervious to detection, the mutants who
ventured into the Seige Perilous were returned but with the warps they had
undergone (some of this was used in Inferno as well, proving that writers
who can't use something here will use it there). The X-Men was going to be
a much darker comic and Excalibur the light side. X-Factor and New Mutants
would essentially begin to pick up the pieces and rebuild mutant/human
relations.And that's all I can remember for those of you still awake
now--Tendram

Pretty cool huh? I really wish this version would
have happened. Oh well.--Nick

That info on the Mutant Massacre is great! I had no idea.
It would have been much better, I think.
Man, would I love to see Moore set the Fury on Earth-616's heroes--maybe
a What If/Elseworlds story? Like Peter David's Last Avengers Story!
Too bad Moore has no interest in working for Marvel, or doing that sort of
story...--Snood.

Profile by Loki

CLARIFICATIONS:
Mad Jim Jaspers of Earth-616 should be differentiated from
Mad
Jim Jaspers of Earth-238, his counterpart on that
world. Both have been referred to as the Crooked Man. They have no known
connections to

The Jaspers Warp - The Jaspers Warp was
a period of reality instability which gripped Britain and possibly the entire
world during the period Jaspers was Prime Minister. During this time reality
became increasingly unstable, with people mutating or catching fire or floating
off into the sky, while buildings twisted and turned around them. Nothing
remained to anchor people to sanity, and many children in the womb around
this time would later be born as Warpies, bizarre mutated creatures. As Jaspers'
power grew, so the Warp spread. The Jaspers of Earth 238 managed to spread
his warp to engulf the Earth and beyond, out into space, and it was predicted
that if he went unchecked it would spread out to contaminate his entire universe
and possibly beyond: he was only stopped by the total destruction of his
universe. The Jaspers of Earth 616 was more powerful than his counterpart,
and Merlyn stated that even destroying his universe would not stop him.